THE TALL SHIPS

Ok, John Mitchell (from Arena) in the place of Francis Dunnery is not a great idea in my opinion, as perhaps the present work earns a certain impact (talking about the guitar lines), even though by losing the typical vocalism which made a kind of fortune for this band in the eighties...certainly you know that I don' t like the crossover prog or modern n.p.w. so much, except on a few tunes regarding a quite remarkable band like IQ and the early Pendragon as well, for example; but as a musician honestly I don' t like any band which let the prog genre be too much close and closer to a kind of mainstream music (especially when I hear about a new production): a music, I mean, lacking on the intelligent symphonic breaks-through and what ever you regard as the best astoninshing moments!! In fact, their music genre is much into the eighties and also distant from the mainstream production of nowadays, playing this game alone with a few chances!!

However, proceeding from the beginning, the tune "Oh my God" is a bit bombastic, although the vocal harmony is not bad ; instead you have to wait till track#6 to find a very interesting song: "The Wind That Shakes The Barley"- with an intelligent guitar riff and a quite good organ too- which is almost emulating the best proto-prog songs of the early seventies, despite of standing alone to an acceptable quality level...then the same evaluation for another good track like "For safekeeping", with its nice/quite usual piano and a mood in the vein of a certain easy "AOR" music and....for me nothing else is well worth checking out or anyway a must-have , cause their final mini-suite to conclude the album is often uneven and- in general- unfortunately you don't find any peek inside this "The Tall Ships".

For the fans of the band only!!